Experts at CSU's Colorado Climate Center look at March 2026 mega records

The list of March's weather woes was long in 2026. A new map from the Colorado Climate Center at CSU in Fort Collins glows with red, showing heat that's been way out of line for the period. It was a month that means a lot of rewriting for the record books.

"The March heat that we saw was truly like nothing that we've ever seen in our period of record in Colorado," said Allie Mazurek, the Climate Center's engagement climatologist. "I mean, it was long-lasting. It was intense heat, and it was way ahead of schedule of what we would normally expect."

As April starts, the byproduct of March's dry heat is barren looking and closed ski areas and mountains without snowpack.

"Our statewide snowpack typically peaks around April 7 if we're looking at the state as a whole," Mazurek explained. "We're seeing the kind of melt-off of the snowpack that we typically wouldn't see until May."

That means high fire danger and low water supplies ahead.

The thing about March was that it wasn't one or two records: It was a lot of them.

"Some locations broke their previous March record five, six, seven times," Mazurek said. 

And not by a little bit. In Fort Collins, there was a record-high temperature that exceeded the record-high April temperature as well.

Monthly records for the state go back to 1895, so experts know there's a lot to March's madness. 

"We're expecting statewide that this past March was 3 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than any other March in that 132-year period," Mazurek explained.

How to attribute the warm month will be studied.

"It's always difficult to attribute individual events to climate change … and I think that we would need to do a deeper dive to, you know, officially confirm that for this particular warmth we've been seeing," Mazurek said. "But, under climate change, we can definitely expect more of these record-shattering type temperature events to occur throughout the year, not just in the springtime."

Snowpack is also miserable, with levels of about 22% statewide for March. Measuring stations in the mountains are at unprecedented levels.

"We have 94 stations; 89 of them are currently at record lows," Mazurek said. 

There has been a little April moisture, but Mazurek says there's a long way to go.

"We're so far in the hole, you know, odds of making up major, major progress at this stage are very low," Mazurek said.